LDG-Gaming

Take the players away and the admins suddenly aren't admins anymore. Give it a try, if it's popular then the server pulls more players, if it's not, then you have the satisfaction of saying 'told you so'.

About 140 maps were played previous weekend and about 40 of them were Oldz maps. Its not even 1/3. I'm not sure players love Oldz as was said before in this topic.

Eiforia wrote:About 140 maps were played previous weekend and about 40 of them were Oldz maps. Its not even 1/3. I'm not sure players love Oldz as was said before in this topic.

That's hardly a fair representation when OLDZ vote weight rapidly drops to less than 1. It's no surprise that OLDZ doesn't win all the vote when it requires 2-3x the votes.

There is no way to win this one.

I would indicate that OLDZ is rare and thus more popular because of that, but the obvious counter is to say that OLDZ should be on all the time to see how it works without the novelty factor, and from that point you have lost - if OLDZ becomes popular or competes with RACE from there, the justification exists for keeping it. If OLDZ tanks, there's still justification for keeping it, because some people who are known to love glitching and bugging (donnie, balkanraiser) will defend it vehemently and with such low vote frequency, it would not be considered a major problem by the Champion of OLDZ.

The fact is, regardless of what proof will bleat about skilled players moonlighting playing race, muh ut-zone community, 1on1, etc. that in general, race players are sticking with this amateur gametype in a ten year old game because they are bad, and don't actually want this gametype to be designed or have any depth whatsoever - they are here because they want it to be broken, as that way they don't have to compete with anyone or even actually drive, in the case of maps they can bug. The aforementioned skilled players didn't get good from playing OLDZ, they got good from playing combat gametypes and if they want an occasional break in a troll gametype, whatever - they're not my major concern, the noobs are. In the face of that, I'm surprised RACE lasted as long as it did. A lot of these players played what was OLDZ for YEARS before LDG tried to turn the gametype into "Race" rather than "Sit in base with a set of twin beams and shoot everyone who comes out", so we've always known what the players really wanted.

I'm just glad beyond words that I don't play AS/Race anymore.

Also, Takeo - quit voting in polls when you've not been seen in years. That irked me, too.

hurr durr y r u posting? because I was responsible for pushing RACE in the first place, which gives me an interest in this specific topic

If OLDZ tanks, there's still justification for keeping it, because some people who are known to love glitching and bugging (donnie, balkanraiser) will defend it vehemently and with such low vote frequency, it would not be considered a major problem by the Champion of OLDZ.

This makes no sense and undermines your whole post. If it tanks, it would be removed regardless.

I'm talking in terms of voting frequency. If it doesn't win that often (and as we know, it will be played whenever it does) there's no stability problem.

Comparing the second OLDZ week of this month to the first, there are some interesting statistics (bear in mind that both these had the server limit set to 32, not 26):

Sept. 1 (with megafun): 13 games were above the average playercount percentile (95%?) (the value is around 22 players and above). 6 of these were OLDZ games (42%). OLDZ was played 52 times, so 11% of OLDZ games attracted statistically more players than the average player range.

Sept. 2 (without megafun): 9 games were above the percentile. 6 of these were OLDZ games (66%). OLDZ was played 42 times, so 14% of OLDZ games attracted statistically more players than average.

August (with megafun, but with 26 slots): 6 games were above the percentile. 5 of these were OLDZ games (83%). OLDZ was played 31 times, so 16% of OLDZ games attracted statistically more players than average.

And finally, July (with megafun, but again with 26 slots): 1 game was above the percentile. This was an OLDZ game. OLDZ was played 58 times, so roughly 2% of OLDZ games attracted statistically more players than average.

Well, there are lots of variables missing, but here are the rough statistics for OLDZ. Make of these statistics what you will; for example, I haven't calculated the statistics showing how many OLDZ maps attract statistically less players than would normally be seen. And then there are peak times, night ...

I am vehemently against having an OLDZ week - my reason is that we already have updated maps played in either AS or RACE, and both AS and RACE are far more enjoyable than OLDZ. OLDZ is just boring and 3 days a month is thus more than enough. It is sad that players wish to play the shitty, glitchy OLDZ AS maps (with some exceptions, like Poseidon) instead of the glitch-free AS maps we have, but I guess that just emphasises the mindset of certain players.

Over the past month, since the player slots were increased to 32, we have been enjoying an increased server popularity. For example, on Monday we had 29 players on Outback. I think keeping this is a more important change than having an OLDZ week, if you wish to maintain purely server popularity.

I'm also of the opinion that Megafun is more alluring to the majority of players than OLDZ, especially now checkpoints are disabled. If we purely had a Megafun weekend, I would expect the population to remain as high as it would be during OLDZ.

By enabling OLDZ midmonth, my aim was to see if players would vote more in favour of OLDZ map than during a "Megafun weekend" to check if it wasn't "hidden" by Megafun due to the change of rules and gameplay.

So here are the statistics I gathered regardless of playercount for the months of august and september:

06-07 sept (Megafun): OLDZ=55 maps played (28,6%), AS=35 (18,3%), RACE=102 (53,1%)
20-21 sept (no Megafun): OLDZ=42 maps played (30,4%), AS=13 (9,5%), RACE=83 (60,1%)
02-03 aug (Megafun): OLDZ=31 maps played (25,8%), AS=5 (4,2%), RACE=84 (70%) (No AS maps were played at all on August 3rd ._.)

What we can see at first is that with or without Megafun, the percentage of OLDZ maps voted is not changing much, so Megafun doesn't seem to impact OLDZ votes. It might be worth to do another try next month to gather more data and make this more accurate though...

Yet again, a comparison means nothing when the voting mechanics for each gametype are not equal.

OLDZ winning 30% of the vote when it frequently drops to 0.3 vote weight is actually pretty telling.

In order for an accurate test to be performed, the vote weight restriction against OLDZ needs to be removed.